In June 2006, the couple formed by Adam and Shivaun Raff launched their web service with all the enthusiasm in the world. They called it Foundem, and it allowed you to compare prices of different products in the search results.
And then Google appeared.
The Google search engine’s automatic spam filters were activated, and that caused something terrible for that service: was relegated to the last positions in the results list when searching by terms such as “Price comparison” or “shopping comparison”.
Foundem’s business model was to earn a commission when someone clicked on the products it showed in its price comparison. The way they ended up ranking on Google caused a disaster for Adam and Shivaun’s company.
The couple tried to contact Google to review the situation, but two years later nothing had changed and they continued to appear in the latest Google search results. The curious thing is that its positioning was “completely normal” in other search engines, the Raffs explained in an interview on the BBC. That didn’t matter much, because “everyone uses Google.”
In fact, they didn’t even begin to suspect that something strange was going on. Three weeks before Christmas they received a notice that their website was loading too slowly. What was happening was that they were finally getting a lot of visitors. Foundem had just been rated the best price comparator in the UK by a TV channel.
The couple tried to contact Google again, but Those responsible ignored their requests. After taking their story to the press, they ended up explaining what was happening to regulators in the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU.
It was the European Commission that ended up activating an investigation in November 2010. The European Commission filed charges in 2015, and in 2017 Margarethe Vestager announced the verdict: Google had to pay a historic fine of 2.4 billion euros for abusing its market dominance in the price comparator segment. In 2021, the company spent the last bullet it had left to avoid paying that fine, but it was of no use.
The couple indicated in the interview how that did not cause them to uncork any bottle of champagne. After the ruling they declared that “we don’t like bullies” in reference to Google that condemned their project and forced them to maintain a long and tedious legal battle that has taken years to resolve.
In fact, it hasn’t quite done so yet. The Raffs have sued Google for damages in a civil case which is expected to begin in the first half of 2026. By the time that second case is resolved, victory, if it comes, will likely be pyrrhic: They had to close Foundem in 2016.
And yet, years later, the real disaster was the one that Foundem caused to Google.
Imagen | Pawel Czerwinski
In WorldOfSoftware | Google has just suffered a historic defeat in a US monopoly trial: the search giant is reeling
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25724283/andor_s2_tt_a4d0fd8c.png)
